If you’re looking for one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on, it’s changing the taxable amount on jackpots. Congressperson Dina Titus of Nevada is co-sponsoring a bill with her counterpart Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania to raise the tax threshold from $1,200 to $5,000.
“Not only are members of Congress (on board), but even the IRS came out and said this is a good thing to do if you raise that level of tax,” Titus said during the Global Gaming Expo education session “We Are the Champions: A Conversation with the Congressional Gaming Caucus Co-Chair Dina Titus.”
Titus told interviewer Chris Cylke, the American Gaming Association’s Senior Vice President, Government Relations, that the IRS admits the paperwork on the tax is time-consuming and often doesn’t yield large amounts of revenue. Others have gradually joined Titus’s efforts.
“When I first started introducing this bill, I was a lone voice out there,” Titus said, noting that she was often told it only impacted Nevada. “But now, especially because sports betting has spread, it impacts other districts as well when you have those kinds of industry facilities in your district. So we’re gaining co-sponsors. Our caucus is active in advocating for this and it’s bipartisan, because if you look across the country to where gaming is, it’s in districts large and small, urban and rural.”
Titus said she doesn’t support legislation co-sponsored by Representative Andrea Salinas of Oregon and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut that would allocate half the funds raised by the Gambling Addiction, Recovery, Investment and Treatment Act for responsible-gaming measures.
“I support efforts to deal with responsible gaming, but money is already given to states by many in the industry and they haven’t even used it,” she said. “So I’m not sure that the federal government needs to be added to that.”
Cylke asked about some of the sports-betting scandals that have rocked college sports and if the media has conflated them to fit the narrative that sports betting in general is damaging. Titus thinks that there is no need to get the federal government involved. But she cautioned that if “you don’t police yourself, somebody’s going to come in and police it. At the same time some of these new scandals were coming out in the news, Las Vegas was kind of stepping up.”
Titus says she sent letters to the leagues and the NCAA, asking about policies and education of players.
“There was some grumbling at first, but then they all kind of got engaged and responded. They sent us some information,” Titus said. “Some of them have improved the way they educate their players. They educate their players once a year and they have strict penalties and there are no exceptions. If you violate them, the penalties will come down.
“Now it’s in the news, it’s transparent. We don’t like to see that in the news. We want to stop it before it happens, but the fact that it’s in the news tells us that the system is working.”
